While London and Paris politicians may have become embroiled in an unseemly verbal spat over the cities’ respective allure as tourist destinations, the UK capital is unquestionably Europe’s financial centre and holds its own against Paris as Europe’s cultural giant.

However, geographically, it is some way off being anywhere near the heart of Europe, which is a great shame, because a life spent in the heart of the continent can be very pleasurable indeed.

Last weekend for example, I slogged to Heathrow, took a flight to Zurich and then a five-hour train ride through the Swiss mountains to St Moritz, whose bars and restaurants are full of fresh-looking Milanese for whom the trip to St Moritz was the mere equivalent of a drive to their weekend cottage.

The Milanese routine is something worth admiring – after pulling up in their Porsches or Maseratis, complete with spouse and kids, and checking into Badrutt’s or one of the other Palace hotels, Friday night entails a good dinner at one of the excellent local restaurants where owners treat them like long-lost friends and offer them Alba white truffle menus and good Italian wine. The next day, on the agenda is skiing followed by nightclubbing at the King’s or Dracula clubs into the early hours, or – for the less agile – cigars and cognac at a bar cooking up business or sharing old stories. Sunday starts with a late and leisurely brunch negotiating the swift drive back to Milan.

All of which is an extremely non-Anglo-Saxon approach to visiting a ski resort, placing an emphasis on lifestyle rather than the slopes themselves – a bit of sport is mingled with shopping, good food and wine and, most important, friends and family to share it with.

The formula is repeated across the Alps: Germans from Munich driving to Kitzbühel or Garmish-Partenkirchen, Slovenians nipping over to Salzburgerland, French from Cannes and Lyon hotfooting it to the high Alps.

While Brits think of these as places to ski, the locals are enjoying polo on the ice, gourmet weekends and classic car snow challenges. In summer, the emphasis moves from the mountains to the lakes – high-performance sailing boat action in St Moritz or the music festival in Verbier, for example.

Switzerland in particular is blessed with superbly chic and immaculately run lakeside hotels, where hard-pressed business people can spend a relaxing weekend with their families.

None of this comes cheap of course – my bill for four nights, excluding lunches, dinners and skiing, was Sfr5,000 ($5,480), and for those who pay a visit to shop in the luxury boutiques and jewellery stores there’s no limit to your bill.

Not everyone is a billionaire in these resorts. Most of the clientele are merely rich rather than globally wealthy, and this is how they choose to spend their good fortune, which they can afford to do because they don’t have to buy absurdly expensive London houses or pay through the nose for schooling their children. In that lies a possible lifestyle lesson for Londoners…

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The Tally is the free blog of Financial News, providing commentary and analysis on daily news events, and sometimes opening the door to the more quirky and capricious side of the financial world we live in